Lessons from a mission trip
Here’s my update on the Lijiang trip.
I learned three important lessons, one renewed, one new, and one old but unlearned!
The old lesson is this – God is in charge. Despite my usual reaction of horror at the absence of detailed planning, I was once again proved wrong by events.
Whether or not we have a plan, God’s plan always proves to be best. I don’t think this means that we shouldn’t plan, but rather that we should make ourselves available to God’s plan.
Despite our failure to announce our arrival at the schools, both secondary and primary schools were pleased to receive us and let us take some classes. I think the most astonishing case was the primary school, where we turned up completely unannounced, and then found out it was meet the parents day and the classes are all free for us to take. Absolutely perfect timing, despite us having no plan to even visit this school until the day before. Simply amazing.
Personally, I had planned out what I was going to say to the students. You would too, if your Chinese was as koyak as mine. Anyway, one of the quotes I planned to use was from Albert Einstein, and I didn’t know his name in Chinese, and really, you can’t find names from a dictionary can you? Still, I supposed it was OK just to use his English name and hope for the best. Amazingly, as I walked into the class that was randomly assigned to me, there was Einstein’s crazy mug on the wall, a ragged old poster that must have been no less than 10 years old, with his Chinese name (Ai Ying Si Tan) written below for my convenience. God provides. 10 years in advance.
Even my parents experienced God’s preparation for their trip. My Dad can’t speak a word of Mandarin, but the students were so keen to have anyone teach them that they convinced my Mum and Dad to take a class. My Dad had just learnt a Chinese pop song to play for his band in Singapore and amazingly, it turns out everyone in the class knows this song, so they have a whale of a time belting it out. God prepares you, even when you don’t know it!
The new lesson is this – missions are about love and love is consistent. The last time I went to Lijiang, I was focused on sharing the good news. This time round, I noticed that many of the team members had kept notes on the people they had contacted last year, and that the church had actually consistently kept up with them throughout the year. This struck me as being evidence of real love, not a “fire and forget” but a genuine concern for the continued growth of the Lijiang people. I hope that I can learn to build this love in time to come.
The last thing I’d like to say about the trip is that prayer works. We should know this, and more importantly, live like we know it, but somehow it doesn't register more often than it should. When there was a power failure at night, I thought we were all going to go hungry and freeze overnight. Thank God we found a place that was still willing to try to cook dinner. As we said grace, we also prayed for power to be restored quickly. 15 minutes, power was restored! And just to demonstrate that it was God’s answer to our prayer, the next day we went out to the school over the mountain and we found out that power there had only been restored the morning after!
As some of you know, I also had a terrible bout of food poisoning. And from this episode, I can testify that DESPERATE prayer works. I was really ill, throwing up and having diarrhea, and even hallucinating. None of the medicine was working. I could sense my wife was really getting desperate and when she prayed, there really was a sense of urgency and desperation. The moment she started that cry of desperation, I literally felt something change in my gut, and the 15 minute interval toilet trips immediately ceased. God answers prayer.
Going on a mission trip with mature and fruitful Christians is always a boost to my own discipline and character building. Having witnessed the power of prayer, I really want to demonstrate my own faith in the power of prayer to my children, by having a consistent prayer life and word time. This will demonstrate to them that it’s not all talk and no action. And once they understand that their parents can count on prayer, then they will learn to count on it too. And what firmer ground to place our feet than on Christ our foundation?
I really look forward to next year’s trip!
I learned three important lessons, one renewed, one new, and one old but unlearned!
The old lesson is this – God is in charge. Despite my usual reaction of horror at the absence of detailed planning, I was once again proved wrong by events.
Whether or not we have a plan, God’s plan always proves to be best. I don’t think this means that we shouldn’t plan, but rather that we should make ourselves available to God’s plan.
Despite our failure to announce our arrival at the schools, both secondary and primary schools were pleased to receive us and let us take some classes. I think the most astonishing case was the primary school, where we turned up completely unannounced, and then found out it was meet the parents day and the classes are all free for us to take. Absolutely perfect timing, despite us having no plan to even visit this school until the day before. Simply amazing.
Personally, I had planned out what I was going to say to the students. You would too, if your Chinese was as koyak as mine. Anyway, one of the quotes I planned to use was from Albert Einstein, and I didn’t know his name in Chinese, and really, you can’t find names from a dictionary can you? Still, I supposed it was OK just to use his English name and hope for the best. Amazingly, as I walked into the class that was randomly assigned to me, there was Einstein’s crazy mug on the wall, a ragged old poster that must have been no less than 10 years old, with his Chinese name (Ai Ying Si Tan) written below for my convenience. God provides. 10 years in advance.
Even my parents experienced God’s preparation for their trip. My Dad can’t speak a word of Mandarin, but the students were so keen to have anyone teach them that they convinced my Mum and Dad to take a class. My Dad had just learnt a Chinese pop song to play for his band in Singapore and amazingly, it turns out everyone in the class knows this song, so they have a whale of a time belting it out. God prepares you, even when you don’t know it!
The new lesson is this – missions are about love and love is consistent. The last time I went to Lijiang, I was focused on sharing the good news. This time round, I noticed that many of the team members had kept notes on the people they had contacted last year, and that the church had actually consistently kept up with them throughout the year. This struck me as being evidence of real love, not a “fire and forget” but a genuine concern for the continued growth of the Lijiang people. I hope that I can learn to build this love in time to come.
The last thing I’d like to say about the trip is that prayer works. We should know this, and more importantly, live like we know it, but somehow it doesn't register more often than it should. When there was a power failure at night, I thought we were all going to go hungry and freeze overnight. Thank God we found a place that was still willing to try to cook dinner. As we said grace, we also prayed for power to be restored quickly. 15 minutes, power was restored! And just to demonstrate that it was God’s answer to our prayer, the next day we went out to the school over the mountain and we found out that power there had only been restored the morning after!
As some of you know, I also had a terrible bout of food poisoning. And from this episode, I can testify that DESPERATE prayer works. I was really ill, throwing up and having diarrhea, and even hallucinating. None of the medicine was working. I could sense my wife was really getting desperate and when she prayed, there really was a sense of urgency and desperation. The moment she started that cry of desperation, I literally felt something change in my gut, and the 15 minute interval toilet trips immediately ceased. God answers prayer.
Going on a mission trip with mature and fruitful Christians is always a boost to my own discipline and character building. Having witnessed the power of prayer, I really want to demonstrate my own faith in the power of prayer to my children, by having a consistent prayer life and word time. This will demonstrate to them that it’s not all talk and no action. And once they understand that their parents can count on prayer, then they will learn to count on it too. And what firmer ground to place our feet than on Christ our foundation?
I really look forward to next year’s trip!
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